The Return of the Golems

“AIPAC urges Congress to grant the President the authority he has requested to protect America’s national security interests and dissuade the Syrian regime’s further use of unconventional weapons. The civilized world cannot tolerate the use of these barbaric weapons, particularly against an innocent civilian population including hundreds of children.” (AIPAC, 9/3/2013)

To understand AIPAC’s press statement to the US Congress and the American people, we must understand what is not said: “urges” means “demands”; “protect America’s national security interest” means “protect Israel’s national security interests”; “dissuade” means “destroy”; “Syrian regime’s further use of unconventional weapons” means “prevent by total destruction Syria’s use of the weapons Israel uses against Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey and the Palestinian people”; “civilized world cannot tolerate the use of these barbaric weapons” means “Israel, which does use these barbaric weapons even against children as in the Christmas devastation of Gaza in 2008/9, calls itself civilized knowing the truth that it acts in a barbaric manner but doesn’t want the world to think that is true.”

Thus do words become the vehicle of mass deception draped in the tailored suits of diplomats, bankers and lobbyists who gather to lament,

“barbarism on a mass scale must not be given a free pass.” How softly they speak, these civilized men, in respectful damnation of a neighbor tangled in a web of western intrigue to dismember the Syrian state while they, the lackeys of the Zionist government, hide the four hundred mile wall that incarcerates the Palestinians, the network of hundreds of checkpoints that ensures no free movement even within their own land, robs the people of the taxes they paid to help the poverty that stifles them, imprisons them without charge in indefinite detention for ten and twenty years destroying home life and economic growth, confident that they carry the seal of impunity of the American Congress for crimes against humanity for their barbaric behavior.

How did it come to this? Centuries ago in ancient Prague before the Jewish people established a state for Jews, before they had the means to impose their will on the people of the mid-east, the Jewish population huddled in ghettos behind walls carved out of cities fearful of annihilation, isolated from the communities that surrounded them, condemned by discrimination, envy and ignorance. Out of that destructive environment, in the city of Prague, Rabbi Lowe sought a solution to the isolation and weariness of his congregants by seeking consolation and security through the magical creation of a creature fashioned from the mud of the Vltava River that runs through Prague. This creature had the form of a human though huge in body and greater in strength, but lacked intelligence, reason and spirit, for he had no soul. The good Rabbi brought this monster to life to protect the ghetto and to labor on behalf of the residents there. Legend tells that the Golem obeyed only his master and only his master could control him, yet to live without a soul guarantees only indifference to others as a consequence of absolute obedience to the master. That danger the Rabbi warned about: “Even the most perfect of Golem, risen to life to protect us, can easily change into a destructive force. Therefore let us treat carefully that which is strong, just as we bow kindly and patiently to that which is weak. Everything has its time and place.” (Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, 1512-1609)

But things have changed since the mid fifteen hundreds. While the wall surrounding the Prague ghetto remains, the reality of Jewish life evolved over the years there, until in the years just preceding the second world war, when Franz Kafka roamed its streets and felt the suffocation of the oppressive air pounding in his head, monsters stirred as Germany found that might indifferent to plight could command and mold minds to their bidding as the ancient Golem did in the damp and murky fingers of Rabbi Lowe. And in that indifference the fate of Jews rested.

Today it seems the vision that formed the Golem in the mind of Rabbi Lowe has metamorphosed, like Kafka’s Gregor, into an ugly image unable to discern its own being even as it constructs a disassociated life pretending that all is well with the world. I see in this change AIPAC as the Rabbi, the controller of the Jews enlisted to his care, as the contemporary controller of all Jews in America and around the world. Like the Rabbi, AIPAC defines the victimized condition of the Jews despite their military and financial power, despite their possession of weapons of mass destruction, despite their ability to mobilize the greatest military the world has ever known, to mold America into its Golem as the Rabbi used his power over his monster, and all to wreck havoc on the Israeli world. Thus does the curse of the Rabbi bloom in our world and his caution to patience and kindness to the weak recede through indifference.

We witness this week the return of the Golems, approximately 375 Congressmen and women in the House of Representatives and one hundred percent of our Senators, as they gather on call to AIPAC’s command as recounted above, our Commander in Chief being but the mouthpiece for the resurrected Rabbi in the form of this committee of presidents of all the Jewish lobbies that buy the diligence and votes of the peoples’ representatives or face depletion of their reelection coffers and ultimate defeat should they disobey. Under this subterfuge rests the disintegrated bones of America’s democracy.

The vote before our owned representatives is simple enough: destroy yet one more enemy of the Jewish state to ensure its security regardless of the consequent insecurity this act will thrust on the citizens of the United States who adamantly oppose yet another war executed for the people of Israel by the people of the United States as they wait once more for the draped coffins of their sons and daughters to be carried from the innards of cargo planes returning from the Syrian killing fields. But who cares? What congressman or woman will stand against the master that controls his or her future as a politician? Have they not already succumbed to the indifference of lives lost in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria? We need only check the record of their obedience that denies the opinions of people around the world who have been repulsed by the deceitful and heinous acts perpetrated by the Zionist state against the people of the mid-East.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 344-36 in support of H. Res. 867, a vote to reject the Goldstone Report Findings and Recommendations, thus protecting Israel against indictment for crimes against humanity and illegal acts of war as determined by the United Nations Human Rights Council’s special investigation of the Christmas invasion of Gaza… “A cursory review of the U.S. Knesset actions taken on behalf of Israel demonstrates conclusively the obedience “our” representatives pay to their owners: 2003, a resolution supporting force against Palestinians, 399-5; 2004, a resolution forbidding a return to the 1967 borders, 407-9; 2006, a resolution defending Israel’s illegal invasion and destruction of Lebanon, 410-8; 2009, a resolution defending Israel’s Christmas invasion of the defenseless people of Gaza, 390-5”; (Cook 2009) and now the Golems gather to voice their obedience on Syria, “The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a resolution on Wednesday authorizing a limited U.S. military intervention in Syria, setting the stage for a debate in the full Senate next week on the use of military force.” Every one of these resolutions support Israel’s illegal actions while the remainder of the world’s nations, excepting a few controlled by the U.S., vote against the crimes of the state of Israel.

This week, with the return of the Golems, the obedient servants of the Zionist state that has refused to find a route to peace in the mid-East, to live in harmony with its neighbors, to take to heart the admonition of Rabbi Lowe, “…to bow kindly and patiently to the weak…,” but rather to conquer the weak and arrogantly to force their Golems to support the illegal confiscation of Palestinian land and the illegal invasions of sister states in Lebanon and Iraq and Syria, then demand of its Golems that they send the sons and daughters of their districts’ citizens to be maimed or die in lands that have no desire to destroy America or the means to destroy it. Thus does America become the soulless power that rampages across the peoples of the mid-East indifferent to the slaughter it has wrought with its missiles, bombs, and chemical weapons while the Israeli war machine sits on the sidelines watching with envy and joy the holocaust brought to its neighbors.

I do not believe that I am exaggerating here. Listen to the Rabbis as they make their appeal to our representatives imposing on them a moral dilemma not addressed in WWII when our government failed to bomb the Nazi concentration camps, their way of raising guilt in their hearts while conveniently omitting the reality that exists today where the Zionist state is the force threatening destruction of the people of the mid-East, but with our Golems acting on their behalf, saving the lives of Israeli citizens by bringing death and destruction to their neighbors:

“Leading rabbis covering the religious and political spectrum urged lawmakers in Congress to support President Obama’s plans to strike Syria to stop its use of chemical weapons.

‘We write you as descendants of Holocaust survivors and refugees, whose ancestors were gassed to death in concentration camps,” said the letter sent Wednesday, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. “We write you as a people who have faced persecution for many centuries, and are glad to have found a safe refuge where we can thrive in the United States…They called on Congress ‘with great urgency to authorize the President to use force in Syria ‘in connection with the use of chemical weapons or other weapons of mass destruction,’ as outlined in his August 31st draft legislation. Through this act, Congress has the capacity to save thousands of lives, (Israeli lives)” the letter said. (Cleveland Jewish News, 9/6/2013).

This is but one of many pleas to the Golems that roam the halls of our Congress waiting patiently to cast their vote for more war. Gregory Wallace three days ago offered this similar cry for support:

“In light of America’s failures in responding to the Holocaust, the moral dimension of Syria’s use of chemical weapons should be at the heart of the Congressional debate.

No attack was carried out, which did lasting damage to the historical reputation of every American official involved, especially the President.

This is not a prediction of the outcome of next week’s Congressional vote on authorizing an attack on Syria for using chemical weapons. It’s a description of the Allies’ rejection in 1944 of impassioned pleas by American Jewish groups and the War Refugee Board (which President Franklin D. Roosevelt expressly set up to rescue Jews in Europe) that the American and British air forces halt the chemical gassing of Jews by bombing the tracks leading to Auschwitz.”

This is not a prediction of the outcome nor is it truth. It’s the people of Syria and Iran who are now caught in the vice of Israeli and American power awaiting the slaughter from the skies that will wreck havoc on them and their families. The consequence of this attack is just as deadly to those caught behind the Auschwitz walls of the Syrian and Iranian borders as the victims of the Holocaust imprisoned behind the concentration camp barbed wire. All are dead and it is indeed the vanquished that know war.

Realizing this why do our representatives not respond to the voices of the American people and the people of the world? What corrosive force compels them to do the bidding of a few who have the most to gain while their own people have the most to lose?

“For months, polls have shown that most Americans do not favor US military involvement in Syria’s civil war. Even with news of last week’s chemical attack – presumably by the Assad regime – that killed hundreds of civilians, the percentage of those favoring an aggressive US response increases only slightly, according to the most recent survey”(Brad Knickerbocker, August 29, 2013).

In 2009 I wrote a piece titled “A Nation of Golems” reflecting the control of our representatives by the Zionist forces that occupy our Congress. Let me offer the closing of that piece here as a moment of reflection before the vote:

“This is the fate of our congressmen and women, indeed, it is the fate of the Jewish people in Israel who have built a wall around themselves, as the Jews in Prague did in the 16th century, fearing all but themselves, victims of all beyond the wall. Golems all, abandoning their God to placate their masters, the ruling secular Golems that have created a state of fear instead of a state for Jews, a state of oppression and indifference, a state of molded minds lacking human sympathy, a state willing to use its only friend in the community of nations for its own ends turning its representatives into pliant, obedient, mindless, soulless clay forms as heedless of the weak as their masters.”. Prof. Cook is a frequent contributor to Intifada Palestine.

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About the Author Prof. William A. Cook

Prof. William A. Cook

William A. Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. His most recent book is Decade of Deceit: 2002-2012 Reflections on Palestine. His other works include Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy, The Rape Of Palestine: Hope Destroyed, Justice Denied, and The Plight of the Palestinians: A Long History of Destruction all dealing with the crisis in Israel/Palestine. His fiction works include The Chronicles Of Nefaria, a morality tale, The Agony of Colin Powell, a one act play, and a co-authored tragedy written with his wife Darcy, The Unreasoning Mask. He also has a Book of Psalms published by Mellon Poetry Press, Psalms for the 21st Century. He can be reached at wcook@laverne.edu or through his web site: www.drwilliamacook.com.

This is a critical moment when America must also send a forceful message of resolve to Iran and Hezbollah — both of whom have provided direct and extensive military support to Assad. The Syrian regime and its Iranian ally have repeatedly demonstrated that they will not respect civilized norms. That is why America must act, and why we must prevent further proliferation of unconventional weapons in this region.